And that was the year that was 2013…

I am going to do something that seems spectacularly self-absorbed. I am going to review the last twelve months of my own blog. OK, maybe not review, maybe sieve it for the real dozen or so nuggets that resonated with my readers the most and still seem super-important to me despite the passing months.

Seems to be true. They don’t look for motivation in their athletes. It comes and goes. They look for commitment. Doing what you need to do regardless of how you feel and regardless of who is or who is not looking.

Pure gold. Personally, this has really helped me this year. I haven’t always felt like a superstar, but I bloody well behaved like one. I did.

February brought the story of the African Shoebill – the bird that has two babies every year and neglects one of them to death…

Mother Nature, as always, as always, as always, has her finger on the pulse. She realises that taking your chances and riding your winners and killing your losers is the route to success. We tend to do the opposite. We do too little, hold our losers hoping they will win and sell our winners for a quick buck. Mother N has honed this stuff over epochs. Her advice is free. Heed it.

In a nutshell – have a gold, silver and bronze target. Don’t kill yourself with only one level of goal which leads to either success or failure. Corporations need to do this three targets thing, and trust their people to go for gold.

Because time management is about efficiency (doing things right) whereas what most of us need is more effectiveness (doing the right things). You are not a production line. Efficiency is not your concern. Be effective.

May brings along a piece on what the psychonaughts would call self-efficacy…

Basically, people who see themselves as being experts in something pretend that the execution of said something is difficult and mysterious. This is what we call in the coaching business a load of crap.

I changed the power supply unit in each of my children’s computers yesterday in preparation for the ninja graphics cards Santa is bringing them so that they can play their games in better-than-real-life ShinyVision…I said to Rob that’s the hardest PC thing I’ve ever done. He said, what do you mean? It took 10 minutes.

This is essential reading for all humans. All humans. It’s about how we can be a chimp or an adult. Adult is better. More people have said to me that they wish they had read this when they were younger than of any other book ever ever. Including mine.

July allows me to talk about my paternal grandmother who worked downstairs as a servant in a big country house…

Why the Olympic gold medal winner cannot train in the UK: too much media attention. His unreasonable goal to win more gold medals requires him to eat, sleep and train. Nothing less and certainly nothing more. It’s called focus.